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[Reprinted from The Christian Register, July 8, 1915.] 


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REMINISCENCES.* 

BY ELIZABETH PUTNAM. 


I go back to my grandfather’s recollections of his 
childhood, one hundred and twenty-five years ago, when 
his father, who had been appointed by Gen. Washington 
to be United States Marshal for Massachusetts (then 
including Maine), was superintending the making of 
the first census, in 1790. 

Grandfather remembered his father’s pride and pleasure 
in displaying to his friends this long census roll, at the foot 
of the last column of which, under the heading “Enu¬ 
meration of Slaves,’’ he had written in clear round charac¬ 
ters the word “None.” Massachusetts had been the 
first of the thirteen States to make this record. Jackson’s 
History of Newton mentions the fact that Jonathan 
Jackson had had in his own family “a trusted bonds¬ 
man” until he placed on record in the Suffolk Probate 
Office his Declaration, which reads as follows, viz.:— 

“ Know all men by these presents that I, J. Jackson 
of Newbury port in the county of Essex, in considera¬ 
tion of the impropriety I feel and have long felt in 
holding any person in constant bondage,—more espe¬ 
cially at a time when my country is so warmly contend¬ 
ing for the liberty which every man ought to enjoy,— 
and having some time since promised my Negro Pomp 
that I would give him his freedom, and in considera¬ 
tion of five shillings paid me by said Pomp, I do hereby 
liberate, manumit, and set him free; and I do hereby 
remise and release unto said Pomp all demands of what- 


*This paper is an address spoken before members of the Boston Branch of the 
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People at a dinner given June 14, 
in honor of Miss Putnam, whose interest and service in the cause of those who need help 
are well known. 





ever nature I have against Pomp. In witness whereof 
I have hereunto set my hand and seal this 19th day of 
June 1776. Jonathan Jackson.” 

“This document is dated just two weeks before the glori¬ 
ous Declaration of Independence proclaiming all men to 
be born free. Pomp enlisted in the army as ‘Pomp 
Jackson,’ served as fifer through the War of the Revo¬ 
lution, received an honorable discharge,” “afterwards 
settled in Andover near a pond still known as Pomp’s 
Pond.” The sons of Mr. Jackson had been instructed 
by him always to take off their hats to Pomp as they 
would to any other friend or acquaintance. 

Another of grandfather’s recollections was of a colored 
employee of the Lowell family who on the birthday of 
Mrs. Lowell brought her a tub of butter with this greet- 


mg:— 


Madam, accept this birthday gift; 
It is as much as I can lift; 

But the love of Philaday 
Doth the butter far outweigh.” 


We are assured that pleasant and considerate relations 
between master and slave, such as are here described, 
often existed in the Southern States and might have con¬ 
tinued had not the use of machinery in cotton manufact¬ 
ure created a demand for cheap labor in the South, where 
the material was produced in the greatest perfection. At 
that time—about 1812—the price of the so-called cotton¬ 
wool was about 25 cents per pound, while sheeting a 
yard wide and of fine texture had been sold here for 
50 cents per yard. The actual manufacture of the cloth 
was commenced in 1814, the price being 25 cents per 
yard. The mills called for skilled labor, and the first 
young women there employed were mostly such as had 
homes near by, but could materially help their parents 
to pay off the mortgages on their farms or in other house¬ 
hold expenses. 

When machinery became more perfect less skill was 
needed for many parts of the work, immigration increased, 
supplying cheaper labor in the mills; then Northern 



3 


speculators set to work to reduce the cost of raw material 
in the South. The consciences of these men became 
blunted, and slave labor was exploited by harsh overseers. 

I well remember that when in later years the wife of 
one of the most upright and hardest-working Northern 
manufacturers said, “ Only see what a good piece of cotton 
I have bought at only six cents per yard,” her husband 
exclaimed, “So much the worse for you, my dear”; and 
it was indeed so much the worse for the slaves. 

Then the South began to clamor for new slave States, 
and only too readily the theory of States’ rights and 
“All hands off” was accepted by the North. The dread 
of mob violence such as had raged in France after their 
Revolution played into the hands of the Southern poli¬ 
ticians and brought the plain speaking of the abolitionists 
into disfavor even among public-spirited Northern citi¬ 
zens, who were ready to have the country buy the freedom 
of the Negroes, if necessary, at the cost of millions of 
dollars per year, rather than take the risk of a mutiny 
among the slaves and the murder of their masters, which, 
moreover, might be avenged by yet worse treatment of 
the culprits. 

How little these conservative men imagined the pos¬ 
sibility of four years of faithful devotion on the part of the 
colored people to the Southern families during the absence 
of their master-planters while the Civil War went on! 

In 1820 Charles Sumner’s father had written, “Our 
children’s heads will some day be broken on a cannon¬ 
ball on this question” (of slavery), a prophecy which 
was literally fulfilled on May 22, 1856, not by a cannon¬ 
ball, but by a gutta-percha cane in the hands of an angry 
Congressman, who struck Charles Sumner on the head 
and felled him to the floor, at his desk in the United 
States Senate,—blows from the effect of which Mr. 
Sumner never fully recovered. 

You know how Congress refused to take action which 
would involve States’ rights,—how the Missouri Com¬ 
promise was made and then repealed and all discussion 
of questions relating to slavery were “laid on the table.” 


4 


When I was about fifteen years of age, in 1851, at 
Mrs. L.’s school here in Boston, one of our schoolmates, 
probably three or four years older than myself, was sent 
for to return to her home on account of the death of her 
father. This girl’s face has been before my mind all 
through this discussion upon “The Birth of a Nation,” 
for she was a mulatto, a beautiful girl, dark but with red 
color mounting through her dark skin. Ten years later 
Mrs. L. told me more about this schoolmate, and from 
Mrs. L.’s daughter I have just heard the rest of the story. 
The father, her white master and owner, had died without 
taking full measures to set his daughters free and they 
passed with the rest of the “property” into the charge 
of the father’s brother. A sister of my schoolmate had 
been with friends in Paris, and on hearing of the condition 
of affairs these friends hid the girl so that the heir to the 
estate never succeeded in finding her. 

Meantime my schoolmate, arriving at her home and 
finding herself still a slave and a slave to her father’s 
brother, took her own life. Mrs. L. told me that'this 
young girl had known only too well what was likely to be 
her fate in case her master should have failed to set her free. 

It was at about that time that a keen, bright-eyed, wiry 
little gentlewoman from Connecticut went with her 
husband to make a home in the Southwest. Seeing 
slavery at close range, she wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” 
Her story was translated into many languages and touched 
the hearts of the people of many nations until we our¬ 
selves were forced to listen. 

The rendition of Burns, which I well remember, when 
under guard he was marched in solemn procession through 
State Street to the wharf, and the demand of the South for 
more strict fugitive slave laws and penalties, proved a 
home thrust to our citizens. The persistent demand for 
extension of slavery into the Territories brought North¬ 
erners to their feet, and mainly upon that issue turned 
the election of Lincoln. 

Then the gun was fired on Sumter and the war was upon 
us. William Lowell Putnam, not twenty-one when he en- 


5 


listed, calmly said: “People say this war will last six 
months. It will last nearer six years, but when it is over 
slavery will have been abolished. ’ ’ Feet tramped along the 
street to the chant of “John Brown’s body lies a-mould- 
ering in the grave; his soul is marching on.” Regiments 
were recruited, drilled in camps, and borne away on trains 
for the South. 

Then came the battle of Bull Run. (May we never 
hear of another such example of unpreparedness!) 

Some of the plantations and city houses were deserted 
by their owners, and the slaves came into the Union camps. 
Then Gov. Butler suggested a name for these refugees; 
he called them contraband of war. Meantime the Sea 
Island region had become Union territory, the planters 
and their families having fled. Mr. Pierce was com¬ 
missioned to get under way some method of managing the 
Negroes and starting a cotton crop for 1862. An Educa¬ 
tional Commission for Freedmen was organized in Boston, 
New York, and Philadelphia, and on March 3, 1862, 
there set sail for Port Royal a party of public-spirited 
men and women, with salaries of from $25 to $50 per 
month. With that goodly company of Northern white 
men and women went Charlotte Forten (afterward Mrs. 
Francis Grimke). My friend H. W. wrote from Port 
Royal of Miss Forten, who was of partly Negro blood: 
“She has one of the sweetest voices I ever heard. The 
Negroes knew the instant they saw her what she was, 
but she has been treated by them with universal respect. 
She is an educated lady.” While Charlotte Forten was 
in Boston as secretary for the Freedman’s Aid Society 
I had known her well. It is of her that her niece, Angelina 
W. Grimk6, has lately written a poem, which was pub¬ 
lished in the December number of The Crisis. 

Jan. 1, 1863, came the Emancipation Proclamation. 
Col. Wentworth Higginson immediately organized a 
colored regiment. In June, 1863, Col. Robert G. Shaw 
led his troops through Pemberton Square to the State 
House, and they followed the rest out into the South, well 
knowing the peculiar dangers awaiting them. 


6 


When I was first appointed by Gov. Long upon one 
of the unpaid boards to be a trustee of the State schools 
at Monson, Westboro, and Lancaster, Louis Hayden, 
who had been rescued from slavery by the underground 
railway, was employed as, I believe, messenger to the 
Governor and Council. As we met one day on the stair¬ 
way Louis Hayden said to me, “Miss! won’t you tell me 
your name?’’ I told him, and he added, “I like to see 
you coming in and out here, fattening on charity!” 
After that we had many friendly greetings. About a 
dozen years later I met Dr. Henry I. Bowditch at the 
top of Joy Street, and when I asked where he was going 
so late in the afternoon, with the sidewalk glazed with 
ice, he answered, “To tell Louis Hayden that his mort¬ 
gage is all paid off.” I asked whether I might go there 
with him. We went up one flight of stairs to a small 
room lighted by one unshaded kerosene lamp. Louis 
Hayden sat upright in his armchair; Mrs. Hayden, 
darker than her husband, sat in the full light of the lamp. 
Dr. Bowditch threw back his cloth cape, his snow-white 
hair and his pink and white complexion making his 
benevolent face more striking as he gave his message to 
his happy listeners. I longed for the brush of an artist 
to paint the scene. 

About the time when the Port Royal experiment was 
being tested one of my friends who is with us to-day, came 
to our house to ask whether we could not each manage 
to save at least the price of a new necktie and pay the 
salary of a teacher for the freedmen. Too small to be 
accepted as a branch of the Freedman’s Aid, we called 
ourselves “The Twig.” Later we took the name of “ The 
John A. Andrew Society ” and sent two or more teachers to 
Charlottesville and elsewhere. Their letters were full 
of interest. They were by no means welcomed by the 
Southern women, but persisted nevertheless. 

Coming down to present days let us take account of 
where we stand. 

Here in Massachusetts we newly recruited members of 
the admirable National Association for the Advancement 


7 


of Colored People have lived year after year, seeing little 
and knowing less of one another’s aims, motives, possibili¬ 
ties, until this Association, with its hundred eyes, feet, 
hands, and tongues, called attention to certain innovations 
tending to segregate the equally competent government 
clerks of our two races in the District of Columbia, 
all of whom had successfully passed the Civil Service 
tests. 

We who remembered the war, and had often, while 
absorbed in other cares, longed to help those for whose 
freedom our friends had fallen in battle, welcomed a 
better acquaintance with their affairs and with the Congres¬ 
sional bills which concerned them. 

We have now worked together and have formed fast 
friendships with one another. Let us remember the 
example of Atlanta, Ga., and seek opportunity to work 
together, not only where the danger signal warns us of 
some proposed race oppression, not only in emergencies. 
Let us make ready to co-operate whenever “a long pull 
and a strong pull and a pull all together” may be needed 
‘‘to keep Massachusetts in the forefront of righteousness.” 





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